Twelfth Night (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 185326010X ISBN 13: 9781853260100

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 1995

Synopsis

Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.

Variously melancholy, lyrical, joyous and farcical, Twelfth Night has long been a popular comedy with Shakespearian audiences. The main plot revolves around mistaken identities and unrequited love. Both Olivia and Orsino are attracted to Viola, who is disguised as a young man; and Viola's brother, Sebastian, finds that he is loved not only by Antonio but also by Olivia.

Meanwhile, in the comic sub-plot, Sir Toby Belch and his companions outwit the vain Malvolio, who is ludicrously humiliated. While offering broad comedy, Twelfth Night teasingly probes gender-roles and sexual ambiguities.

About this title

Review:

One of Shakespeare's finest comedies, Twelfth Night, was written at the same time as Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida, and while it shares their fascination with sex, death and confused identities, its exuberant comedy and linguistic inventiveness rises above the introspection of these plays. Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated in a storm that washes them both up at different points on the shores of Illyria. Believing each other to be dead, both attempt to survive by using their wits. Viola cross-dresses and enters the service of the lovesick Orsino, in love with Olivia, an heiress in mourning for the loss of her brother. Orsino's saucy young page Cesario (Viola) soon falls in love with "his" master, who tells "him", "all is semblative a woman's part". Unfortunately, while Viola falls in love with Orsino, Olivia falls in love with her alter ego, Cesario, while also being pursued at the same time by her pompous servant Malvolio. Olivia's house is also turned upside down by the antics of her drunker uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and the whole crazy situation reaches boiling point when Sebastian reappears.

Despite the madcap plot, Twelfth Night remains one of Shakespeare's most complex and inventive comedies, fascinated with questions of cross-dressing, gender confusion, language and inversion, as well as retaining a darker edge to some of its laughter. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

The combination of careful scholarship emphasising the inspiration and excitement of the theatrical experience, with the freshly edited text, should make this one of the most useful new texts of Twelfth Night. --Theatre Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 185326010X
• ISBN 13: 9781853260100
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 87
• Editor: Watts M.A. Ph.D. Professor Cedric